Google Taps Wikipedia’s Wales to Help Weigh “Right to Be Forgotten”

Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales says he wants a new Google advisory committee on privacy to be seen as a blue-ribbon panel taken seriously by lawmakers to guide public policy. Wales is one of seven members of the committee named late Thursday by Google, as it tries to comply with an EU court order to scrub personal information from search results upon request.

Internet entrepreneur and main founder of the online encyclopedia Wikipedia Jimmy Wales

European Pressphoto Agency

“In my view, our role is not just to recommend things to Google, but also to recommend to the public and to legislators,” he said in an interview with the Journal. “Here’s a framework, here’s some ideas regulators should consider.”

Still, Wales said there were times when it makes sense to prevent facts from being easily accessible online. He struck a measured tone, similar to one Google was trying to convey on Friday.

“There are some compromises possible,” Wales said. “We can begin to be a little more intellectual about what constitutes private data.”

As an example, he said he doesn’t think architectural floor plans for houses in Florida, a state with liberal public information policies, should be online. “It’s not at all clear to me what the public benefit is of putting a burglary map together for everybody,” he said.

But Wales said the responsibility lies with the government, not Google. The approach is similar to one Google has taken in the past, arguing that they are merely information middlemen.

The task is complex, said committee member Luciano Floridi, a philosopher at the Oxford Internet Institute, who was also tapped for the panel.

“Everyone would like to have all these elements: privacy, transparency, the right to be forgotten, the right to know,” Floridi said. “The trouble is that once you put them in the same system, you start looking at compromises.”

Wales said the panel should include opposing viewpoints, but he hasn’t had a chance to learn more about the other members. They include: Frank La Rue, a United Nations special rapporteur; Peggy Valcke, a director at the University of Leuven’s law school; José-Luis Piñar, a former director at Spain’s Data Protection Agency; Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt; and Google chief legal counsel David Drummond.

“I haven’t even had time to Google them all,” Wales said. “Presumably they won’t have all removed themselves from Google.”

La Rue, Valcke and Piñar weren’t immediately available for comment.

Wales said he wasn’t sure whether Google would ultimately follow the committee’s recommendations, which are expected out in 2015. He said he wasn’t sure how or when the group will meet–whether it will be in person, over the phone or even in a Google Hangout.

“Hopefully it will be a group that will be looking for some solutions that are a step forward that people on all sides can agree will be a useable set of recommendations,” he said.